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#1
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Trouble booting now totally out of service
System placed in service Jan 2001: PC-Chips M805LR motherboard with VIA KT133 chipset, Athlon 1GHz cpu, 512MB SDRAM, AGP video It has run with a number of HD's & OS's over the years including Linux, Win98 & Win2K, & with LILO and NT-loader. I've always kept the boot sequence at Floppy--CD--HD and the boot *hangups* started occasionally about maybe about 2? years ago and would often come after a "Boot from A.T.A.P.I. CD" if I had left a data CD in the drive. Other times I have gotten the "LI" failure indication and a Grub error on a couple of occasions although I've never installed Grub. Pressing reset alone always caused a re-boot which was almost always successful. Over the past several months as it was getting worse, it's been running a 30GB HD with vanilla Win98 on it. [Note: That HD is running fine in this machine now where I boot to it optionally from the Bios boot menu]. Boot failure always occurred! [whether I had a bootable floppy or CD in or not] and occurred at the point where POST had displayed a screenfull of all the h/w configuration. Pressing reset would repeat the process and it would take more & more repeats as the days went by before the boot went on & completed. More recently, it would give a semi-trashed screen as the last one before success and I started sometimes needing to use the front power-off button as reset had no effect at that point. Anyhow, it all was looking very much as though something was needing to warm up. Once up, it would run all day without problem!! During the above running period, I had reseated everything includung IDE cables, swapped out memory, AGP video card plus installed a new CMOS battery. Nothing helped with the boot hangs. Then one morning after running all day previously, it went the rest of the way. Press front power-on and no signal to monitor as it has only yellow led on. Both PS fan and cpu fan are running as is green power-on led on case front. Reset has no obvious effect although a flicker in an led may be quicker than I can detect. Case front power button needs to be held in to shut systen down. Do I have toast? or is it something simple that I've overlooked? Bob |
#2
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On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 13:21:39 -0700, Robert Heiling
wrote: System placed in service Jan 2001: PC-Chips M805LR motherboard with VIA KT133 chipset, Athlon 1GHz cpu, 512MB SDRAM, AGP video It has run with a number of HD's & OS's over the years including Linux, Win98 & Win2K, & with LILO and NT-loader. I've always kept the boot sequence at Floppy--CD--HD and the boot *hangups* started occasionally about maybe about 2? years ago and would often come after a "Boot from A.T.A.P.I. CD" if I had left a data CD in the drive. Other times I have gotten the "LI" failure indication and a Grub error on a couple of occasions although I've never installed Grub. Pressing reset alone always caused a re-boot which was almost always successful. Over the past several months as it was getting worse, it's been running a 30GB HD with vanilla Win98 on it. [Note: That HD is running fine in this machine now where I boot to it optionally from the Bios boot menu]. Boot failure always occurred! [whether I had a bootable floppy or CD in or not] and occurred at the point where POST had displayed a screenfull of all the h/w configuration. Pressing reset would repeat the process and it would take more & more repeats as the days went by before the boot went on & completed. More recently, it would give a semi-trashed screen as the last one before success and I started sometimes needing to use the front power-off button as reset had no effect at that point. Anyhow, it all was looking very much as though something was needing to warm up. Once up, it would run all day without problem!! Check cables, connectors, card contacts, fans, voltages, and examine the motherboard capacitors for venting. During the above running period, I had reseated everything includung IDE cables, swapped out memory, AGP video card plus installed a new CMOS battery. Nothing helped with the boot hangs. Disconnct all but the essential drive to boot from. Try leaving only the floppy connected and run Memtest86 on it for a few hours. Then one morning after running all day previously, it went the rest of the way. Press front power-on and no signal to monitor as it has only yellow led on. Both PS fan and cpu fan are running as is green power-on led on case front. Reset has no obvious effect although a flicker in an led may be quicker than I can detect. Case front power button needs to be held in to shut systen down. Do I have toast? or is it something simple that I've overlooked? Try clearing CMOS. Check the battery voltage. If the system power supply is similarly low-quality as the motherboard, you've gotten good value out of both at this point in time- and now both should be replaced (if none of the above makes any difference). |
#3
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kony wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 13:21:39 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote: System placed in service Jan 2001: PC-Chips M805LR motherboard with VIA KT133 chipset, Athlon 1GHz cpu, 512MB SDRAM, AGP video It has run with a number of HD's & OS's over the years including Linux, Win98 & Win2K, & with LILO and NT-loader. I've always kept the boot sequence at Floppy--CD--HD and the boot *hangups* started occasionally about maybe about 2? years ago and would often come after a "Boot from A.T.A.P.I. CD" if I had left a data CD in the drive. Other times I have gotten the "LI" failure indication and a Grub error on a couple of occasions although I've never installed Grub. Pressing reset alone always caused a re-boot which was almost always successful. Over the past several months as it was getting worse, it's been running a 30GB HD with vanilla Win98 on it. [Note: That HD is running fine in this machine now where I boot to it optionally from the Bios boot menu]. Boot failure always occurred! [whether I had a bootable floppy or CD in or not] and occurred at the point where POST had displayed a screenfull of all the h/w configuration. Pressing reset would repeat the process and it would take more & more repeats as the days went by before the boot went on & completed. More recently, it would give a semi-trashed screen as the last one before success and I started sometimes needing to use the front power-off button as reset had no effect at that point. Anyhow, it all was looking very much as though something was needing to warm up. Once up, it would run all day without problem!! Check cables, connectors, card contacts, fans, voltages, and examine the motherboard capacitors for venting. Reseating done over & over again already as mentioned. Both PS & cpu fan still run. Voltages were still in spec when I was last able to get into the Bios to look at them. Inside of case, MB, PS, & CPU always kept as dustfree as possble on a regular basis. During the above running period, I had reseated everything includung IDE cables, swapped out memory, AGP video card plus installed a new CMOS battery. Nothing helped with the boot hangs. Disconnct all but the essential drive to boot from. Sorry. I maybe should have included it, but I had to stop somewhere and I've already done that along with the things mentioned above. I've basically done most of the fault-isolation tricks of that nature. It's that "warmup" that had me stumped and I keep wondering if the heat didn't close some hairline crack somewhere or have a similar effect. Try leaving only the floppy connected and run Memtest86 on it for a few hours. Hard to do when it won't even boot. :-) Then one morning after running all day previously, it went the rest of the way. Press front power-on and no signal to monitor as it has only yellow led on. Both PS fan and cpu fan are running as is green power-on led on case front. Reset has no obvious effect although a flicker in an led may be quicker than I can detect. Case front power button needs to be held in to shut systen down. Do I have toast? or is it something simple that I've overlooked? Try clearing CMOS. Check the battery voltage. Just tried that again, but no go. If the system power supply is similarly low-quality as the motherboard, you've gotten good value out of both at this point in time- and now both should be replaced (if none of the above makes any difference). Thanks, but I'll do that once I find out what's wrong with it. I was hoping that the pattern of its failure would be familiar to someone here. Thanks for trying Bob |
#4
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At this point simple problems seem out. The boot
problems suggested mobo and/or memory troubles. If you have swapped out all the parts, then the mobo or CPU are all that is left. "Robert Heiling" wrote in message ... kony wrote: On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 13:21:39 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote: System placed in service Jan 2001: PC-Chips M805LR motherboard with VIA KT133 chipset, Athlon 1GHz cpu, 512MB SDRAM, AGP video It has run with a number of HD's & OS's over the years including Linux, Win98 & Win2K, & with LILO and NT-loader. I've always kept the boot sequence at Floppy--CD--HD and the boot *hangups* started occasionally about maybe about 2? years ago and would often come after a "Boot from A.T.A.P.I. CD" if I had left a data CD in the drive. Other times I have gotten the "LI" failure indication and a Grub error on a couple of occasions although I've never installed Grub. Pressing reset alone always caused a re-boot which was almost always successful. Over the past several months as it was getting worse, it's been running a 30GB HD with vanilla Win98 on it. [Note: That HD is running fine in this machine now where I boot to it optionally from the Bios boot menu]. Boot failure always occurred! [whether I had a bootable floppy or CD in or not] and occurred at the point where POST had displayed a screenfull of all the h/w configuration. Pressing reset would repeat the process and it would take more & more repeats as the days went by before the boot went on & completed. More recently, it would give a semi-trashed screen as the last one before success and I started sometimes needing to use the front power-off button as reset had no effect at that point. Anyhow, it all was looking very much as though something was needing to warm up. Once up, it would run all day without problem!! Check cables, connectors, card contacts, fans, voltages, and examine the motherboard capacitors for venting. Reseating done over & over again already as mentioned. Both PS & cpu fan still run. Voltages were still in spec when I was last able to get into the Bios to look at them. Inside of case, MB, PS, & CPU always kept as dustfree as possble on a regular basis. During the above running period, I had reseated everything includung IDE cables, swapped out memory, AGP video card plus installed a new CMOS battery. Nothing helped with the boot hangs. Disconnct all but the essential drive to boot from. Sorry. I maybe should have included it, but I had to stop somewhere and I've already done that along with the things mentioned above. I've basically done most of the fault-isolation tricks of that nature. It's that "warmup" that had me stumped and I keep wondering if the heat didn't close some hairline crack somewhere or have a similar effect. Try leaving only the floppy connected and run Memtest86 on it for a few hours. Hard to do when it won't even boot. :-) Then one morning after running all day previously, it went the rest of the way. Press front power-on and no signal to monitor as it has only yellow led on. Both PS fan and cpu fan are running as is green power-on led on case front. Reset has no obvious effect although a flicker in an led may be quicker than I can detect. Case front power button needs to be held in to shut systen down. Do I have toast? or is it something simple that I've overlooked? Try clearing CMOS. Check the battery voltage. Just tried that again, but no go. If the system power supply is similarly low-quality as the motherboard, you've gotten good value out of both at this point in time- and now both should be replaced (if none of the above makes any difference). Thanks, but I'll do that once I find out what's wrong with it. I was hoping that the pattern of its failure would be familiar to someone here. Thanks for trying Bob |
#5
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On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 16:07:54 -0700, Robert Heiling
wrote: Thanks, but I'll do that once I find out what's wrong with it. I was hoping that the pattern of its failure would be familiar to someone here. The pattern falls under the all-encompasing "something is gradually getting less stable", up until the point where the function had degraded enough to completely prevent operation. That can be caused by many parts but most commonly motherboard or power supply. The last attemp could be pulling out the board and power, plus CPU, 1 memory module and video, and trying this barebones combination alone on a desktop. Then swap in a different power supply or motherboard if possible. |
#6
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But doesn't anybody here know *why* I could always get into the Bios on the cold system, but a boot would not complete until the system had been on for 5-10 minutes? i.e. warmed up?? I'm willing to believe that whatever it was that was gradually failing and getting worse & worse with time, finally went out. What might it have been? Pen wrote: At this point simple problems seem out. The boot problems suggested mobo and/or memory troubles. If you have swapped out all the parts, then the mobo or CPU are all that is left. "Robert Heiling" wrote in message ... kony wrote: On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 13:21:39 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote: System placed in service Jan 2001: PC-Chips M805LR motherboard with VIA KT133 chipset, Athlon 1GHz cpu, 512MB SDRAM, AGP video It has run with a number of HD's & OS's over the years including Linux, Win98 & Win2K, & with LILO and NT-loader. I've always kept the boot sequence at Floppy--CD--HD and the boot *hangups* started occasionally about maybe about 2? years ago and would often come after a "Boot from A.T.A.P.I. CD" if I had left a data CD in the drive. Other times I have gotten the "LI" failure indication and a Grub error on a couple of occasions although I've never installed Grub. Pressing reset alone always caused a re-boot which was almost always successful. Over the past several months as it was getting worse, it's been running a 30GB HD with vanilla Win98 on it. [Note: That HD is running fine in this machine now where I boot to it optionally from the Bios boot menu]. Boot failure always occurred! [whether I had a bootable floppy or CD in or not] and occurred at the point where POST had displayed a screenfull of all the h/w configuration. Pressing reset would repeat the process and it would take more & more repeats as the days went by before the boot went on & completed. More recently, it would give a semi-trashed screen as the last one before success and I started sometimes needing to use the front power-off button as reset had no effect at that point. Anyhow, it all was looking very much as though something was needing to warm up. Once up, it would run all day without problem!! Check cables, connectors, card contacts, fans, voltages, and examine the motherboard capacitors for venting. Reseating done over & over again already as mentioned. Both PS & cpu fan still run. Voltages were still in spec when I was last able to get into the Bios to look at them. Inside of case, MB, PS, & CPU always kept as dustfree as possble on a regular basis. During the above running period, I had reseated everything includung IDE cables, swapped out memory, AGP video card plus installed a new CMOS battery. Nothing helped with the boot hangs. Disconnct all but the essential drive to boot from. Sorry. I maybe should have included it, but I had to stop somewhere and I've already done that along with the things mentioned above. I've basically done most of the fault-isolation tricks of that nature. It's that "warmup" that had me stumped and I keep wondering if the heat didn't close some hairline crack somewhere or have a similar effect. Try leaving only the floppy connected and run Memtest86 on it for a few hours. Hard to do when it won't even boot. :-) Then one morning after running all day previously, it went the rest of the way. Press front power-on and no signal to monitor as it has only yellow led on. Both PS fan and cpu fan are running as is green power-on led on case front. Reset has no obvious effect although a flicker in an led may be quicker than I can detect. Case front power button needs to be held in to shut systen down. Do I have toast? or is it something simple that I've overlooked? Try clearing CMOS. Check the battery voltage. Just tried that again, but no go. If the system power supply is similarly low-quality as the motherboard, you've gotten good value out of both at this point in time- and now both should be replaced (if none of the above makes any difference). Thanks, but I'll do that once I find out what's wrong with it. I was hoping that the pattern of its failure would be familiar to someone here. Thanks for trying Bob |
#7
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On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 17:21:28 -0700, Robert Heiling
wrote: But doesn't anybody here know *why* I could always get into the Bios on the cold system, but a boot would not complete until the system had been on for 5-10 minutes? i.e. warmed up?? I'm willing to believe that whatever it was that was gradually failing and getting worse & worse with time, finally went out. What might it have been? Typically it could be power or motherboard capacitors, poor solder joints (further degrading with numerous slight thermal cycling) or board cracks. |
#8
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kony wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 16:07:54 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote: Thanks, but I'll do that once I find out what's wrong with it. I was hoping that the pattern of its failure would be familiar to someone here. The pattern falls under the all-encompasing "something is gradually getting less stable", up until the point where the function had degraded enough to completely prevent operation. But I was smart enough to figure that part out all by myself. :-) I was hoping that the gurus would have a better answer. That can be caused by many parts but most commonly motherboard or power supply. I had been secretly hoping that everything would point to the power supply because I would pop the $$ for one if I could be reasonably certain. But a spare unused power supply sitting on the shelf out in my garage because that wasn't the problem isn't my idea of how to spend my money. Aren't there some voltage test points that I could check now? The drawer on the CD drive must locked or something as it won't open when I press the button. [yes the power is connected] The last attemp could be pulling out the board and power, plus CPU, 1 memory module and video, and trying this barebones combination alone on a desktop. Then swap in a different power supply or motherboard if possible. I don't have all those spare parts sitting around even though I'm a packrat. I'd have to buy them. Right now I have this PC-133 memory that I can't use anywhere else, a Radeon that can be used, etc. It's a slow system by modern standards, but my wife was happy with it, so I'd like to get it running again if it's not too complicated. Bob |
#9
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kony wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 17:21:28 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote: But doesn't anybody here know *why* I could always get into the Bios on the cold system, but a boot would not complete until the system had been on for 5-10 minutes? i.e. warmed up?? I'm willing to believe that whatever it was that was gradually failing and getting worse & worse with time, finally went out. What might it have been? Typically it could be power or motherboard capacitors, poor solder joints (further degrading with numerous slight thermal cycling) or board cracks. That makes a lot of sense! I believe the cracked solder would behave just like the symptoms. Since the problem involved trashed video as it was building up and it is video that is now dead, it might be a solder joint in video related circuitry. Any ideas on that? like near the AGP slot? Although it's unlikely to be visible to the naked eye. It may also be important to note that it may have been attempting to switch from text video to graphics video at the time of failure, although the video cards I tried were not failing. Bob |
#10
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On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 17:58:02 -0700, Robert Heiling
wrote: kony wrote: On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 17:21:28 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote: But doesn't anybody here know *why* I could always get into the Bios on the cold system, but a boot would not complete until the system had been on for 5-10 minutes? i.e. warmed up?? I'm willing to believe that whatever it was that was gradually failing and getting worse & worse with time, finally went out. What might it have been? Typically it could be power or motherboard capacitors, poor solder joints (further degrading with numerous slight thermal cycling) or board cracks. That makes a lot of sense! I believe the cracked solder would behave just like the symptoms. Since the problem involved trashed video as it was building up and it is video that is now dead, it might be a solder joint in video related circuitry. Any ideas on that? Video won't appear if any other part of the system doesn't work, it would be the typical failure-to-post problem. It "could" be video related, but insufficient information to know- and we may never know, a modern board is too complex and small to easily test, and often not worth the time even if one could test it. like near the AGP slot? I'd suspect that region to be less likely than many- because the soldered-on slots greatly reinforce the board to prevent bending. Cold solder joints could be anywhere though, no easy way to see under a ball-grid chip. Although it's unlikely to be visible to the naked eye. It may also be important to note that it may have been attempting to switch from text video to graphics video at the time of failure, although the video cards I tried were not failing. That may not mean anything, switching to graphics may've simply been a significant increase in power usage. If you had a spare PCI video card lying around you could try it, but I won't hold a lot of hope for it working unless the power supply itself was just barely limping along and the PCI card used significantly less power than the former video did. |
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